Healing 2 Minorities’ WWII Wounds

Some things on Capitol Hill are personal.

Such was the case when Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), a former war internee, attended the groundbreaking for the National Japanese American Memorial.

And such was the case for the late Joe DiMaggio’s brother, Dominic, when he testified at a congressional hearing that his father was forbidden to visit the family restaurant in San Francisco during World War II because of restrictions on Italian Americans.

More than 54 years after the war ended, a battle to heal the wounds of the past continues.

As construction begins for the Japanese American memorial near the U.S. Capitol, Congress is considering a bill that would require the Justice Department to document the civil rights abuses suffered by Italian Americans during the war and direct the president to acknowledge this “fundamental injustice.”

The memorial and the legislation are designed to educate new generations about past civil rights abuses to make certain they do not happen again.

In fact, Matsui is a co-sponsor of the Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties Act. Supporters say that Italian Americans do not equate their experience with that of Japanese Americans. Nor do they seek reparations.

The bill, introduced by New York Reps. Rick Lazio, a Republican, and Eliot Engel, a Democrat, and co-sponsored by 83 members of Congress, directs federal authorities to support projects to “heighten awareness of this unfortunate chapter in our nation’s history.”

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Dom DiMaggio, 82, a former Boston Red Sox star who enlisted in the Navy after the 1942 baseball season, said at a recent House hearing: “I had no idea that while I was away fighting for my country, the United States government declared Italian Americans enemy aliens.”

After Pearl Harbor, the government applied precisely that classification to 600,000 Italian immigrants, said Lawrence DiStasi, president of the western chapter of the American Italian Historical Assn., which sponsors “Una Storia Segreta,”--the Secret Story--a traveling exhibit on the Italian American war experience.

For several months, Italian immigrants were prohibited from traveling more than five miles from home without government permission, forced to carry special IDs and turn in shortwave radios, cameras and flashlights, DiStasi said.

About 250 Italian immigrants from throughout the country were interned for about two years, many of them in Montana, he said.

In California, about 52,000 residents of Italian descent were confined to their homes by an 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew, and 10,000 noncitizens--along with their American-born children--were relocated away from coastal and military zones. The restrictions lasted several months.

DiMaggio said his father, Giuseppe, could not visit friends or the family’s restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf.

Also testifying in support of the bill was Doris Pinza, widow of opera star Ezio Pinza of “South Pacific” fame who was detained at Ellis Island for nearly three months. He was accused of altering the tempo of his voice to send messages to the Italian government.

“While we cannot erase the mistakes of the past, we must try to learn from them in order to ensure that we never subject anyone to the same injustices,” Lazio said.

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That point also was made at the groundbreaking for the Japanese American memorial by Matsui, who sponsored the 1996 law providing the site for the memorial.

“I have very mixed emotions” about the memorial, said Matsui, who was 6 months old when he and his family were interned at the Tule Lake camp in California.

The memorial will represent the government’s failure to protect its citizens’ rights, he said. But it also will represent the government’s acknowledgment of its injustice, as well as pay tribute to Japanese Americans who served in combat during World War II.

The privately funded, $10-million memorial will feature a wall tracing the history of Japanese immigration and including the names of more than 800 Japanese Americans killed in combat in World War II. Also on the wall will be the names of the 10 camps used to confine 120,000 Japanese Americans--two-thirds of them American citizens--for four years.

A 14-foot statue will depict two cranes--Japanese symbols for happiness, good fortune and longevity--grasping barbed wire as they try to free themselves from confinement.

Also attending the groundbreaking were Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), who lost his right arm while fighting with the Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy, and former Rep. Norm Mineta (D-San Jose), a former internee.

Mineta sponsored the 1988 law extending a formal apology to Japanese Americans for the internment and providing a $20,000 payment to each internee. The government has paid out about $1.6 billion to 82,219 Japanese Americans.

Information on the Japanese American memorial is available at www.njamf.org and on the Italian American war experience at www.io.com/~segreta